Rats Are About to Get Busted

By Max

On Friday, August 26, at 10 p.m. ET, Animal Planet is starting a 6-episode series called Rat Busters NYC. It stars two guys named Jimmy and Mike and scores of rats, who were all most likely harmed (murdered) during the filming of the show.

But don’t get me wrong. I may be a kitten, but I’m not soft on vermin. I don’t mind that Animal Planet thinks killing innocent creatures is entertainment. I can’t wait to watch those suckers go down. I’m just upset that Animal Planet hired humans to do the job when so many cats are out of work.

Don't bother pleading for mercy, you rat-bastard!

Jimmy and Mike work for Magic Exterminating. It’s like Ghost Hunters for rodents. They work in Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs, which is a rat paradise, according to Animal Planet.

Eeewww! Alert for the Bourdain family: The website boasts that rats are found “everywhere — from warehouses and small businesses to apartments and single-family homes, from the Upper East Side to Tribeca and crawling all over Brooklyn and Queens!”

The site also tried to dispel some myths about rats, such as that they can grow as big as cats. False. They said domestic rats usually top out at 2 pounds, and the world’s biggest rats, in Papua, New Guinea, only make it to about 3 pounds, while cats are more in the 8-10-pound range. (I’m 4 ½ lbs.)

But Cats Working documented a rat in China that weighed 6 pounds.

Even so, if a cat and a rat get into a serious smack-down, that rat won’t be around to brag about it to his grandkids.

I mull the option of suffocating him painlessly while digging my claws into his back.

But then Animal Planet dissed cats by saying we’re ineffective ratters because we can’t possibly keep up with the rat population, nor clean out the tiny places they hide.

OK, so where were Jimmy and Mike during the Black Plague? More recently, why didn’t the city of Los Angeles have any doubts cats were up to the job?

What AP forgets is that the mere presence of a cat makes rats think twice about putting down roots. If rats were so brilliant, they’d be the ones with 9 lives.

I'm not letting go 'til you squeak "Uncle!", Cheddar-Breath!

Anyway, I just thought I’d let all my new cat friends know there’s 6 hours of whisker-licking rat-bashing coming that you won’t wanna miss.

New York’s Between a Rat and a Hard Place

By Fred

It’s legend that two of my predecessors, Coco and Cleo, both declawed, once tag-teamed a mouse at the kitchen sink. Their kill was so meticulous, the mouse looked like it had died in its sleep.

In 14 years I’ve been on the job here, ably assisted by Yul and Adele, I’m proud to say nothing bigger than a bug has ever infiltrated our happy home.

Rodents know instinctively that anywhere with a cat… or three… is no place to settle down and raise a family.

After Rats Gone Wild in a Greenwich Village KFC/Taco Bell on YouTube highlighted serious vermin issues, deli and bodega owners in New York welcomed cats into their establishments.

But here’s the rub. Local health codes and state law ban all animals from stores serving human food or beverages. The fines are $300 for a first offense and $2K+ for subsequent offenses.

Which would you rather see, a fastidiously groomed cat sitting on the counter, or rodent footprints and “raisins” on your cheesecake?

Cats make more humane pest controllers than professional exterminators because our methods don’t let our victims have slow, agonizing deaths in inaccessible places where they rot and stink up the joint. We believe nothing says “I love you” more eloquently than the gift of a dead rat at our owners’ feet.

So I hope the bureaucrats in NYC will get real and give the cats a break. They’re hard-working and they need homes. It’s possibly the only front in the war on terror we can win. Thanks to cats, these rat bastards are definitely going down.